Epidemics Of Suspicion Fear Spreads When Disease Runs Rampant

March 5, 1986|By Anne C. Roark, Los Angeles Times

An incurable disease. . . . Highly contagious. . . . Fatal to nearly all who contract it. . . . Its victims shunned by society, even by some members of the medical community. . . . Its cause: unknown, except to religious fundamentalists who proclaim it God's wrath against sin and perversion. . . . The death toll: rising.

A description of the acquired immune deficiency syndrome epidemic? Certainly.

But that description also fits virtually every major human epidemic going back as early as 4000 B.C. in Egypt with leprosy and continuing into the 20th century with influenza, polio and even Legionnaire's disease.

Indeed, nearly every such virulent outbreak seems to carry with it not one but two epidemics: the physical manifestations of the disease and society's often predictable reactions to it -- denial at first, followed by hysteria, a search for scapegoats, an onrush of commercial exploiters and, sometimes, improved public health standards and scientific insights that significantly prolong life expectations.

''If you look at what's happening today with AIDS and you look back six centuries ago and see what was happening with bubonic plague, it seems to me we aren't so far ahead from previous eras, despite all of our medical technology, despite all of our sophistication,'' said George S. Rousseau, a University of California, Los Angeles English professor who is doing research on the connections between medicine and literature.

Some epidemics have dramatically changed the course of history. Scholars now believe, for instance, that the bubonic plague profoundly altered the face of Europe -- collapsing its economy, rupturing its bonds of feudalism, fundamentally changing religion. Others argue that syphilis helped usher in the dramatic changes in lifestyles that characterized the Victorian Era and the Age of Puritanism.

The AIDS epidemic is hardly likely to have such profound effects. But ''some kind of permanent changes in lifestyles will surely come about as the result of AIDS,'' said Brian Henderson, professor of preventive medicine at the University of Southern California and director of the university's Norris Cancer Center.

It remains to be seen whether a cure for the deadly syndrome or a vaccine to protect against it will be found. What is clear is that only five years into the AIDS crisis, most of mankind's historical reactions to epidemics have already begun to resurface.

When AIDS was identified in the spring of 1981 it was thought not to be contagious. It did not even have a name until 1983. AIDS ravages a victim's immune system, rendering it helpless in the face of innumerable infections and cancers.

Early on, it was dubbed the Gay Epidemic. Then it was said to be a Haitian disease. Soon intravenous drug users were implicated. By Feb. 10, 1986, there had been a total of 17,361 reported cases of the syndrome, and 9,112 deaths. But many more -- perhaps 2 million individuals -- were thought to be carriers. Where the medical profession could offer neither hope nor protection, commercial exploiters moved quickly to fill the void. Gay sex shops sold gels and creams that promised to ''protect'' users.

Overnight, the victims and their families had become society's new ''untouchables.''

Even though evidence mounted by the week that quarantines would do nothing to stop the disease's spread, politicians in California, Texas and Ohio pushed for legislation to isolate AIDS victims.

Man has never been particularly gracious in the face of disease. Fear of contagion -- and ignorance about the source of an epidemic -- have often led to bizarre behavior and sometimes barbaric practices.

When the plague struck Europe in the mid-14th century, killing 25 percent to 50 percent of the continent's population, it left terror in its path. Brothers shunned brothers. Husbands fled wives. Mothers abandoned children. Bodies were dropped in the streets and no one could be found to bury them.

Bubonic plague is an overwhelming infection of the blood that often turns hemorrhages black; hence its name, ''the Black Death.'' It accompanied the Crusaders and was carried by fleas alongside the silks and spices Western merchants brought from Asia. It recurred again and again through the mid-17th century.

It was ''the greatest natural disaster in European history,'' according to Robert S. Gottfried, a professor of history at Rutgers University and author of The Black Death: Natural and Human Disaster in Medieval Europe.

The plague hit England again in the 17th century in what became known as the Great London Plague of 1665. At its worst it killed 500 people a day. But society had become more civilized then. The dead were at least laid to rest. But ''laid to rest'' at that time meant that bodies were tossed into ''dead carts'' and often crammed into mass graves, according to Daniel Defoe's account in A Journal of the Plague Year.

Throughout the ages, each epidemic has spawned strange rituals and bogus remedies to rid society of its scourge.